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Stripe bans Trump campaign

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Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#791

Post by eecc »

oceanplexian wrote: post #766
eecc wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they’re cowards - a bit - but let’s be honest they’re in the business of making money, not political activism (besides boilerplate corporate facade.) Had they acted earlier they would have been punished heavily by the Trump clique, and most likely ousted by their own shareholders, to be replaced by executives that would have done precisely what they have done

They got into the business of political activism when they plastered Black Lives Matter on their websites, app stores, and products this summer. Twitter and Facebook did the same when they censored a NY Post story about a politician this fall. Big Tech is very much about political activism.

That’a what I meant with “besides boilerplate corporate facade”.

Listen, civil rights and social justice are something to be discussed and struggled in the public sphere, which is not corporate life.

You US folks have this Corporatism so deeply ingrained that you are going to drag public discourse into an authoritarian organization where everything is ultimately determined by the Board and not by you. The Board will play along, as long as their interests align and it means free advertisement and good will. But you’re still asking “daddy, can I?”

You want to be political? Unions and party activism out of office hours.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#792

Post by asdff »

nmfisher wrote: post #585
igetspam wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The private entities are not the justice department. They are not the judiciary. They are not lawyers and they are not juries. They do not require criminal conviction before taking action. Your question is irellevant. But to give you a partial answer anyway: Many criminals are never convicted. Many _known_ criminals are never convicted, due to lack of undeniable proof. Some criminals are convicted on lesser crimes, j…

The question is not “what legal power does Twitter have”. I’m not saying they legally can’t kick him off their platform. The discussion is whether they should be able to kick someone off their platform who has been convicted of no crime, because of how integral they have become to the political process.

Integral for whom, though? Not a huge number of people are involved in political twitter:

https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/23/just-6-of-u-s-adults-on-tw...

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#793

Post by NeutronStar »

spijdar wrote: post #380
hilbertseries wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without an uncensorable currency, any political adversary -- especially an incumbent -- can just coerce payment processors into blocking payments to their opponents through threats of imprisonment or violence against a handful of executives. How is this a good faith argument. You’ve jumped a situation where somewhere is being deplatformed and banned from various services for encouraging violence. To someone will us…

I'd define fascism as a method of government which enforces some specific morality/actions/market through force. By this definition it's entirely possible for two different brands of fascism to have two opposing goals, and for one to use fascist methods on another fascist. If your definition of fascism is specifically centered around nationalism or racism then this doesn't really work, but I don't think the word fasc…

Your first paragraph is about authoritarianism, not fascism.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#794

Post by ShamelessC »

sam36 wrote: post #658
ShamelessC wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "ANTIFA" riots? Can you cite a source for this claim that the black lives matters protests were propagated in any sort of widespread, organized concerted effort by "ANTIFA"? I hear this claim often from Trump supporters but as far as I can tell, they either heard it on talk radio or Fox News. Considering Fox News' coverage of Trump prior to the election, I don't exactly consider them a reliable source. If you cou…

Yea, 6 months of coordinated riots and the "right" is the problem https://fukkot.com/riots/all/ Oh and Biden won less counties than Hillary, which was already low for her (hence her loss). Biden under performed in every state except for 5 key swing states and even then it was only a "win" because a never before seen amount of mail in ballots were used. Perhaps they were fake, or perhaps people that would never set fo…

I'm sorry you're incapable of seeing that this is factually incorrect. I hope that you're able to reflect on this in the next few years as Donald Trump's legacy will be similar to that of Nixon, if not worse. And deservedly so. I don't believe any further conversation will be in the spirit of Hacker News' rules. I'm sorry your leader tricked so many of you and then immediately threw you all under the bus.

At moderation, I realize I've gotten to a point that you may consider "flame bait" and I'll admit, my tensions are high due to the reprehensible nature of many of these comments and how sad I am for my country. I'm happy to have my comment removed of it doesn't follow the guidelines.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#795

Post by asdff »

licebmi__at__ wrote: post #716
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russian opposition is tamest of the tame, yet, it is routinely deplatformed and prosecuted, guess for what, calls for extremism and violence! And a large portion of population believes that to be true, because government controls most sources of information. I think US might look exactly same in a few years. The mighty benevolent Party will care for thankful citizens, with the exception of a few outcasts who can't ev…

One could also construct an argument about some groups like ISIS recruiting and calling for violence in social media, claiming to fight for freedom and against evil, and create a false slippery slope that America might be equivalent to the caliphate in the next 70 years. I could argue that with all the defects in the Russian political climate, I would prefer to live that kind of regime than something equivalent to an…

Reminder that this was the year where right wing militia groups felt confident enough to plot to kidnap lawmakers in Michigan. Anything is possible, and this country is changing.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#796

Post by paganel »

avianlyric wrote: post #282
johndevor wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of speech was created when there were many distributed newspapers. If one newspaper decided not to publish your piece, you could go to another. There was not a cabal of newspapers that controlled 99% of information distribution, like do Twitter, Facebook, and Google. This is not something the founders ever could have foreseen. For all intents and purposes, freedom of speech has flatlined in America. What will…

Freedom of speech has nothing to do with newspapers or news, and never has done. It only protects you from government, nothing else. There are legitimate concerns regarding monopolistic behaviour of large digital gatekeepers. But we don’t solve that by deciding to restrict their speech (which is what forced speech would be). You solve it by either making them utilities or breaking them up to create more competition.

> It only protects you from government, nothing else.

As I had mentioned in another comment a few days ago, it stands to reason that were the government to outsource the censorship to private entities (like Orban is now doing in Hungary, where almost all the media is in his pockets) than everything would be technically legal, even though it would definitely be against the spirit of the law.

As a matter of the fact the US right does seem to say that the same thing is happening right now, i.e. that the US mainstream media is "in the pockets of the left" hence the censorship.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#797

Post by osgovernment »

beltex wrote: post #641

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” — George Orwell, Animal Farm I understand the moves by Stripe, Twitter, and co. However, I would argue that the long term implications set by this precedent are much worse. When the Snowden story first broke back in 2013, many on HN argued that, hey it's all good, I have nothing to hide, and I trust our President. Three short years later, who took…

Strength through adversity? Maybe this will be the fire needed to improve decentralization and alternative currencies that are more censorship resistant?

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#798

Post by oceanplexian »

trustfundbaby wrote: post #279

I was on the fence about this, but reading the comments convinced me it was the absolute right decision. The fact that all these institutions just allowed this horrible hateful speech for four years, in the name of free speech etc, despite all the harassment, harm (mental and otherwise) it caused to so many people in America actually emboldened so many to the extent that now that they crossed this invisible line, the…

I feel like your analysis misses the forest for the trees.

Even if Facebook, Twitter, etc, had banned all these platforms and politicians, I'm confident people still would have come out for the protest. Taking away people's ability to organize on mainstream platforms didn't stop the HK protestors from organizing against the CCP. The lack of online platforms didn't stop the Color Revolutions in Eastern Europe. Even the Arab Spring, while often attributed to Twitter, happened in the face of mass censorship and Internet shutdowns.

IMHO the decisions to de-platform these groups will do nothing to put a dent in their political ideology, and will only serve to throw gasoline on the fire at a contentious period where many millions of people feel like they don't have a voice. And it's likely that peaceful discourse and political thought will be wiped out as collateral damage as a result of the decisions these companies are making.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#799

Post by rayiner »

systemvoltage wrote: post #685
rayiner wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to deeply think about all this - allowing peaceful, objective, conservative opinions and policy (such as the Lincoln Project) while condemning hate speech, violence, white supremacy and other racist behavior. But that’s the problem. Nobody trusts people in Silicon Valley or New York City to decide what those things are. These are people who have internalized ideas like “you can’t be racist against white peo…

There shouldn't be any problem with these discussions when they're posed without hate. Immigration for example should be discussed in terms of cost/benefit and immigration of talent, policies, etc., not "Build a wall and Mexico will pay for it" or outright banning people based on religion (remember Muslim ban?). The problem is that these are not conservative principles. This is just hate spewing, plain and straight.

> There shouldn't be any problem with these discussions when they're posed without hate. Immigration for example should be discussed in terms of cost/benefit and immigration of talent, policies, etc.,

The idea that immigration is solely about “cost/benefit” and “talent, policies, etc.” is an inherently liberal, and indeed quite radically liberal framing of the issue.

The International Convention on Civil and Political rights recognizes that distinct “peoples’” have a human right to self determination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination. That is, distinct identifiable groups have a right right to self-governance.

That is the basis for national borders as we know them today. But if distinct people have a right to self governance, it follows that nations have a right to control immigration for whatever reason they want, including the characteristics that make them distinct.

It’s wholly legitimate for a country not to take immigrants who they think might change the culture of the country, or not fit in, or simply because they don’t want to. It doesn’t have to be justified with some sort of economic analysis. It’s not “hate spewing” when the Japanese refuse to accept immigrants for no reason other than large scale immigration would change Japan’s culture. It’s likewise not “hate spewing” for someone in Boise Idaho to say “I like my society the way it is, and I don’t want people here who have a different history, political tradition, etc., especially when they’ll be voting on the laws that govern me.”

My family is from Bangladesh. My parents are fairly Americanized, but they really don’t understand some of the subtler things about American culture, like our anti-elitism and love of guns. In Bangladesh, the elite govern and there is no “glorification of the common man.” It was also disarmed by the British, so there is no gun culture. This results in hilarious arguments between my dad and my wife, whose family populated the Oregon coast on the wagon trails, who still hunt for food and hate the government for taking their homestead to build the pacific coast highway. Immigration inherently changes the culture and people are fully entitled to support it or oppose it, or support slowing it or increasing it on that basis.

But liberals usually can’t even see that dimension of the issue because they’ve internalized cultural relativism.

Re: Stripe bans Trump campaign

#800

Post by oceanplexian »

onion2k wrote: post #745
roenxi wrote: post #739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, this was 100% a mob out for literal blood. There is a STAGGERING amount of evidence. 100%? Literally all of them? Every one? I'm not looking for a metaphorical response here. Which parts of your response are backed actual evidence and which parts are assumptions based on your instincts and filling in blanks?

Not everyone in the mob was out for blood, but the mob as a collective group was. The mob killed a police officer. Anyone who was part of the mob is partly to blame for that. No one can take part in a group action and then claim they're not responsible for what the group has done. When people act as a group they have to accept responsibility for the group's actions.

It's starting to come out that his death was a driven by a medical condition and not actually as a result of violent attack. While the news is still fairly fresh it seems like most mainstream news organizations have been misrepresenting the facts.
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